Death Makes Life

We wake up each morning to a world of hurt. The pain is all around us. We
take an athropomorphic view, but all life experiences birth, reproduction
and dissipation. Life is often referred to as a gift. A better description
would be to refer to life as food. We are being harvested. The specter of
life is to be consumed as food.

What is similar to all life is a means of reproducing. It has been
suggested that RNA preceded DNA reproduction and perhaps it did because
RNA can replicate without DNA but DNA cannot replicate without RNA. RNA
contains ribozymes which with enzymes produces proteins and ALL life as we
know it shares the same chemistry. Pollock (94) in Signs of Life wrote:
"...we are related enough to a duck and an orange that we can eat them
both."

We are carbon based life. DNA is a helix of the building blocks of life:
the code which is a recipe for constructing and maintaining life. The
three components necessary for life -as we know it- is energy, water and
carbon; all of which is found throughout the universe.

Most of our energy comes from the sun but now we know energy also comes
from the core of the planet as hydrogen sulfide which provides energy for
life which survives without the sun, i.e. thermophylic bacteria and
other organisms which live in the depths of the oceans.

There are some theories that life arrived on in meteorites or comets. 70
separate amino acids have been discovered in meteorites and contain all
the essential ingredients for life. Meteorites and comets have impacted
the earth throughout its history and the force of these impacts
transformed amino acids into the proteins necessary for life. And some
theories [see Harper, Nova TV series, WGBH 2005, Origins: How Life Began]
suggest bacteria, the procursor of eukaryotes arrived from outer space
transported here by meteorites and comets.

Life is both prey and predator. My best friend(s), my dogs, have the
predatory behavior of their ancestral wolf. My predatory behavior is tied
to survival. Hostility and war is as natural as life is old (in our frame
of reference). My dogs have hierarcy and dominance behavor, which they
display with each other, when they are not playing or sleeping. We just
kill our enemies who are those who compete with us for territory and
resources - which has been the history of groups since time began.

Dogs stalk, chase, grab and bite each other. Predatory motor patterns are
obvious behaviors in animals and we are just animals with a larger brain
and we assume an awareness of these things, which evolved as our defense
against predators and our offensive strategies and the success
of our species.

Of course different animals display different patterns and so do we
because we are by the way, just animals ourselves, in spite of some who
think humans are a higher form of life - which we are not.

We are human-centric organisms and are too often oblivious to the pain of
other animals. Some cultures eat animals we would never think about as
food. And the females of several species also eat their mates after they
copulate with them. This happens with spiders and some other animals.
The males actually welcome being consumed by these female spiders because
it ensures that their sperm will have longer to fertilize her and eating
the male spider is a distraction so the female doesn't move on to another
spider until she finishes her meal. I wouldn't exactly call it love, but
maybe to a spider it is. It most assuredly is the ultimate in love making.
I like sex but not that much. But you know humans have some weird sexual
perversions also and can be very self-destructive.

Life is a Product of Death

Death makes possible life. That is certainly the case with spiders as
noted above, but it is also essential to all life.

From Tyler Volk, What is Death? (a scientist looks at the cycle of life):
"Biological recycling is the worm that munches leaf litter into
microscobic bits that are then further degraded by bacteria into nutrients
that later can become tree leaves again Death makes life..."

 Hank Roth

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